Who gets room for the river? Negotiating the frontier of flood risk in Kathmandu’s ecological urban renewal

Kathmandu’s riverside informal settlements sit at the intersection of recurrent flooding and renewed pressures to “make room for the river” through ecological urban renewal. Based on my experience within the Kathmandu Ecological Urban Renewal (KEUR) Project Preparation Study, this mémoire asks how flood risk becomes a category that justifies intervention in river corridors. It examines (1) through which planning devices risk becomes actionable, (2) who defines thresholds of acceptable exposure and legitimate presence, and (3) how slum residents contest and negotiate these thresholds in practice. The study follows a nested case-study design across three scales: the Kathmandu Valley as a socio-ecological system, the KEUR project as an institutional arena, and Thapathali slum as a site where risk is lived. It combines spatial and statistical analysis with qualitative material. Findings suggest that declaring a settlement “too risky” is not a neutral hazard diagnosis but a classificatory act. Within KEUR, risk is stabilised through corridor envelopes, eligibility filters, and pilot packaging that make interventions financeable while deferring distributive questions about centrality, debt, and recognition. In Thapathali, residents frame flood loss as tolerable relative to livelihood access and social support, prioritising tenure arrangements that limit capture and long-term indebtedness. The thesis frames the “risk frontier” as a negotiated boundary shaped by unequal power and by the devices that convert socio-ecological uncertainty into planning action.